Visual Arts for the Visually Impaired: Tactile Drawing Tools
This video is posted online with the following chapter markers:
Chapter 1. Drawing: When & Why?
Chapter 2. Building and Reinforcing Skills
Chapter 3. Curriculum
Chapter 4. Drawing with Perkins Brailler
Chapter 5. Websites for Art Teachers
Description of graphical content is included between Description Start and Description End.
Transcript Start
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Animation: Text for TSBVI transform into braille cells for TSBVI.
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Chapter 1. Drawing: When & Why?
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Title: Texas School for the Blind & Visually Impaired
Content:
Visual Arts for the Visually Impaired
Drawing with the Perkins Brailler
February 13, 2017
Facilitated by Scott Baltisberger, Education Consultant
baltisbergers@tsbvi.edu
Description End:
Scott: Hi, everybody, thanks for joining me today.
My name is Scott Baltisberger.
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And I'm your host for this latest edition of our series visual art for the visually impaired webinar series that explores method and materials for providing art instruction for blind and visually impaired students.
And this week we're going to be looking at using the Perkins Brailler for drawing.
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Content:
Figure 1: A photo of student art. A wall sculpture featuring black and white stripes through the middle, surrounded by black and white half circles.
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But before we get started, I wanted to throw up a real short poll.
Asking who is here.
I'm interested to know how many of you guys out there are ‑‑ what your background is.
Because I pitched this program to both art teachers and educators of the visually impaired.
So if you look at the poll.
Let me know what group you belong to, I'll know who I'm talking to live here.
And we will today we'll have some art from you see behind me here ‑‑ [ Laughter ] ‑‑ behind me here, we've got ‑‑ we're going to be showing some art work from the fall program that ‑‑ the art show here at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired that our art teacher, Gretchen [indiscernible] put on for us.
Looking at the poll, looks like we have one art teacher, five TVIs and two others so far.
Okay.
So I wanted to also mention that the webinars are interactive and if you guys look on your screen you should see over on the left‑hand side there's a chat screen and I heartily recommend that you take advantage of it, share any knowledge that you might have, any suggestions that you might have, any questions.
Make things more interactive and makes it a lot more fun for me, too.
As much as I like hearing myself talk, I get tired of it after about 30 or 40 minutes.
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Description Start:
Content:
Figure 2: A Perkins Brailler.
Description End:
So to begin, you guys who are not teachers of the visually impaired, I just wanted to point out what we're going to be ‑‑ the device that we're going to be using today, this is the Perkins Brailler.
This is sort of the ‑‑ the go‑to piece for students who are blind and visually impaired.
So it's, you know, I've got one right here.
If you look at it, if you look on the screen, you can see it's an old ‑‑ it's over 100 years old in design and you'll see it's got, I think it's got nine keys down at the bottom of it.
And then one on the far left is a backspace, the one on the far right is a ‑‑ I'm sorry, the one on the far left is a line advancer, the one on the far right is a backspace and then there's the big key in the middle is a space bar and then there's six keys to actually emboss the dots.
So according to what ‑‑ how many of those keys you hit, it makes different dot configurations.
This is what we'll be using.
So the Braille machine, like I said, the Perkins Brailler is sort of what most blind children start out using when they are real young and in Pre‑K, kindergarten, first grade.
This is what they're using.
It's sort of analogous for a pencil and paper for sighted children.
Something they use a lot and they use it for just about all of the work that they produce in class.
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Content:
Figure 3: A painting by a student. A waterfall created with blue and white paint under a bright orange sky.
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So that's the device we'll be using today.
Okay.
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Description Start:
Title: DRAWING: WHEN AND WHY?
Content:
Early Elementary: PPCD. PK, Kinder, 1st Grade
• Full inclusion in learning activities both in the regular classroom and in art classes
• Integration with peers, incidental learning
• Fun ways to encourage reading and producing braille
• Developmental skills and concepts
Description End:
So I want to talk a little bit about the rationale of why we use ‑‑ you know, why to incorporate drawing with the Perkins Brailler with elementary students.
I am ‑‑ primarily today I'm going to talk about younger children in the ‑‑ in the, you know, the early childhood, Pre‑K, kinder and first grade.
So those are the children we want to look at using it for.
So the reason there's ‑‑ there's several reasons for it.
One is for more full inclusion in the classroom activities.
If you think about what children are doing at this age level, at this grade, they are doing a lot of drawing.
They are using ‑‑ they are incorporating drawing into a lot of activities.
You are know, there's a multi‑sensory approach that they are using.
So it helps with that because when other kids are doing drawing and talking about drawing and using that, it's nice if your student who is blind can also do the same thing.
So that helps them when there's kids ‑‑ kids learn a lot from each other, right?
A lot of learning comes on in the elementary classroom, they're talking to each other about what's going on and they ‑‑ and so by looking at each other's drawings and each other's work, they will learn things.
So, for example, if a kid draws a picture of their dog and they color their dog purple, they might start a discussion about oh, hey your dog is purple, well, yeah, sure.
Of most dogs aren't purple, did you know that?
Oh, really.
So that kind of information comes out.
That sort of integration with their peers, doing the same type of activities together.
I know when I started out as a TVI in working in the schools, sometimes I had a blind student that would be given an so I am, the classroom would be given an assignment to draw something and the blind student they would just have them make a list, have them write something out.
That's really not the same activity.
They're really not doing the same as the other kids, so having them have some facility, some knowledge of basic drawing skills will help them be included in those activities.
If you also think about, you really want kids to be doing a lot of writing at this age.
You really want them to be producing, producing, producing.
And, you know, what we do with our sighted children, we give them the opportunities to do other things with their hands, with their pencils, with their crayons.
Drawing is a fun way to encourage them to read and produce Braille without necessarily doing Braille drills all the time.
The nice thing about the Brailler is that, again, it's always, there it's always available, they know it and they can use it.
So those are some fun that you can use it to incorporate Braille.
The other nice ‑‑ the other aspect is that just looking at developmental skills and concepts, drawing is ‑‑ is very well placed to encourage kids to learn these things and I'll talk about those at the next slide.
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Content:
Figure 4: A cartoon drawing of a boy looking scared on the left and blank space on the right. Captions under the photo read "What is he afraid of?" and "Finish the Drawing."
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Okay.
I'm going to show a few examples of worksheets that kids get when they are in ‑‑ when they're in elementary school.
So here's one.
This is very typical things that you will see kids get.
So, you know, you're supposed to what is he afraid of?
So more than likely, this went with an activity where they read a story or they talked about context cues and the children were asked to draw something.
Again, using multi‑sensory approach to learning.
So this is something where, you know, of course the child would fill in their drawing there.
You know, another example ‑‑ oh, no, got to back up.
If there's another example on that page, yeah.
Or not.
Nope.
Okay.
Yeah.
There should be another drawing example there.
Okay.
All right.
Well then.
All right, let's move on to the next slide.
Okay.
Well, so ‑‑ so this is just more art work from the show this fall.
Okay.
Chapter 2. Building and Reinforcing Skills
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Description Start:
Title: Building and Reinforcing Skills
Content:
Physical
• Finger Strength
• Finger Isolation
• Hand Coordination
Concepts
• Spatial Relationships
• Symbolic Representation
Creativity & Flexibility
Description End:
So let's talk a little bit about building and reinforcing skills.
So with young children, the Brailler machine, you really want them to build their hand strength, finger strength.
Working on the physical skills of Brailling, the more they can do it the stronger they'll get.
So finger strength, being able to isolate individual fingers and just being able to coordinate your two hands together.
Build those physical skills.
And after that, we will look at concepts.
So when you are using drawing in your ‑‑ you are using ‑‑ you are drawing a picture and you are using that to symbolize something else, so you have symbolic representation.
Spatial relationships are ‑‑ are ‑‑ so when you look at your composition on a page, you know, where are objects on the page in relation to other, these are important things that help students with, of course, with orientation and mobility skills, but also with looking at maps and charts and things like that in the future.
It will also apply to living skills, basic organizational skills.
Finally, creativity and flexibility.
So using ‑‑ using drawing as a form of problem solving, as a form of ‑‑ of thinking about solutions to different ‑‑ to different challenges that may come in the classroom, it ‑‑ it sort of initiates a whole different part of the brain for thinking about that.
And builds creativity and flexibility.
There's many studies out there right now looking at the impact of, you know, an arts program on the learning of young children and seeing that children who have a rich arts experience perform better across the board.
So creativity and flexibility.
So there's a couple of articles in the handout that I got from my friend Michael Coleman up in Vermont that addresses that issue of the importance of drawing as for learning.
So if you have time to look at those, those are good.
They are not specifically to vision, but I think that you can extrapolate some of the ideas there toward what we're working with, blind visually impaired students.
So let's see ... let me check the chat.
So Ann Cunningham, hi, Ann.
She wants to know how old are children when they begin to use the Perkins?
Well, when I was a TVI, when I was worked in the field, I usually started having ‑‑ exposing my children to the Perkins Brailler very, very young.
[ Slide end: ]
At least around the age of three.
Four years old.
If any of you TVIs want to chime in on this.
It's a very ‑‑ the key ‑‑ it's a very ‑‑ it's a ‑‑ it's an industrial‑age machine, so you need to build up strength to be able to use it.
But you build the strength by using it.
So the earlier you can get and have them start using it, the better.
But really I always thought of it that analogy of it being like a crayon and pencil are to a sighted child or a pencil and paper are to a sighted child, it's really sort of the basic building blocks of their ‑‑ their literacy.
Yeah, so Laurie Cottrell says she usually gets them at three and starts them right away.
I agree with that.
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Description Start:
Content:
Figure 6: Student art. A wall sculpture made from a vertical dowel from which hang various keys dangling from red yarn.
Description End:
Okay.
I think that's all for the chat.
So let's go on and talk about the ‑‑ I like this piece here.
This is a sculpture that a student did at ‑‑ at the art show.
It's just keys.
All in a line.
It's really nice.
Chapter 3. Curriculum
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Description Start:
Title: Curriculum
Content:
• Drawing lines (horizontal, vertical, diagonal )
• Drawing simple shapes (square, rectangle, triangle, circle, diamond)
• Symbolism (representing the idea, not the image)
• Labeling (names, initial letters)
Description End:
So let's go on.
Okay.
So curriculum.
So there is no real art curriculum for blind students.
Not an official one yet.
So what I have ‑‑ what I have presented here is just some ‑‑ what I want to show today are some basic skills withdrawing with the Perkins Brailler that I think will give blind students some ability or some opportunity to be able to produce ‑‑ start producing images.
So let's look at this curriculum, you know, first of all drawing lines.
The first thing that you can learn on the Perkins Brailler is just how to draw lines.
Horizontal lines, vertical lines, diagonal lines.
Next would be drawing simple shapes.
How to draw squares, rectangles, triangles, circles, diamonds.
They easy to draw with the exception of the circle.
The circle is more challenging.
It can be done, but it takes a little bit more work.
I'm not going to demonstrate a circle today, but I will demonstrate all of those other shapes.
Next would be symbolism.
That ties back into the shapes.
Using different shapes and different textures of shapes and different weights of line, according to which Braille cells that you are using.
Using that to represent an idea or represent a concept.
So I'll talk about that a little bit more about the idea of symbolism and whether ‑‑ what a child draws on the Perkins Brailler should look like what it represents.
We'll talk about that, I'll talk about that a little bit further down the line.
And labeling.
You know, using the idea of whatever they are drawing on their work is that they would also label it.
Are they ‑‑ they could have the option of labeling it.
It helps ‑‑ it can help to sort of help them remember what they drew and also to ‑‑ to ‑‑ when they are interacting with other people or sharing with other people to show what it is.
And labeling will be an important factor later on when you are producing tactile graphics and looking at maps and just understanding the whole concept of labeling.
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Description Start:
Content:
Figure 7: Student Art. A sculpture of a smiling Minion from the popular animated movies. Made of cloth.
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Okay.
So ‑‑ so what we want to do now, what I would like to do now is show a few ‑‑ look, here's a Minion.
This is a sculpture one of the students did during the art show.
Oh, yeah, let's do the second poll.
I'm sorry.
So right now what I would like to know ‑‑ hear from all of you TVIs out there is how much do you use ‑‑ do you teach drawing skills with your Perkins Brailler?
So A a lot, you regularly integrate into it your Braille lessons, sometimes you get to it when you can but it's not your main focus, or number 3, you don't get to it very often.
And so far we're at 100% ‑‑ oh, some people are saying little or not at all.
So far our count is five sometimes and three very little.
I think it kind of depends on the age of your student.
And I think it also depends on ‑‑ on how much experience ‑‑ what should I say?
I think that the idea of drawing with a Perkins Brailler really hasn't been addressed as sort of essential or as being ‑‑ having as much impact as it can have.
I think that ‑‑ I mean, my experience, I didn't see a lot of people using the Perkins Brailler extensively to teach drawing.
It was something that people would get to every now and then.
When ‑‑ say, for example, when it was Christmas or Mother's Day and you wanted to have your student make a heart or a Christmas tree in Braille, that was a time that you would do drawing.
But it really wasn't seen as something essential that needed to be integrated into daily activities and, again, if you look at what kindergarteners and first graders are doing, they're drawing all the time.
And there's a reason for that.
It's not just that kid ‑‑ it's not just busy work.
It's not just to keep kids, you know, because you can't think of anything else to do.
It's because those skills are very essential for building early concepts with children.
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And there's certainly no reason that ‑‑ that our students couldn't be doing that if they had some ‑‑ just some real simple ideas in place.
Chapter 4. Drawing with Perkins Brailler
So let's look at ‑‑ we did some videos earlier of ‑‑ of where I'm showing some of these simple ideas from the curriculum, drawing some simple lines, some simple shapes.
So why don't we take a look at those now.
[Title] Basic Horizontal, Vertical and Diagonal Lines
Scott: Okay, here we go.
This is me just talking about the Brailler.
Again, this is a little better photo of it for you guys that aren't familiar with it.
It looks sort of like a typewriter and it weighs about as much as it looks like.
It's a really heavy machine.
And that little thing up, that's a roller up there that you saw me touching earlier.
You put Braille in ‑‑ put a sheet of Braille paper in.
Okay.
So use your six fingers ‑‑ so, [ Laughter ], what I'm doing now is just ‑‑ these are just lines, there's really nothing ‑‑ there's really not a lot to talk about.
You see I did the first one with all six keys, I did that one with just part of the ‑‑ here I'm just using two keys.
So using the different combinations of dots will give you different weights to the line.
The line will texturally feel different.
You guys are TVIs, this is not anything new.
There's spacing with dots.
Kind of rhythmic quality.
And finally, okay, so now I'm going to show you what I did, but in order to show you have to ‑‑ Braille is difficult to visually it's difficult to see Braille.
What I have there is a graphite stick.
You artists out there may be familiar with this.
You get this from appear art supply store.
Just a stick of graphite and then I will use these scissors to sort of shave it, get a graphite powder.
You TVIs you are probably familiar with this trick, but this is a way that you can make Braille a little more obvious if you want to in write it ‑‑ you rub it in.
Let's see how well that came out.
Yeah.
So there.
So if you see up at the top, that's a full cell and then there's a line of dots one, two, three, then dots of ‑‑ looks like one, two, four, five, and so forth.
So it's a ‑‑ gives you different patterns, different feel to it.
So lines.
Kids have a lot of fun making designs, accessing different patterns.
Very decorative art.
Reminds me of what you see on those Greek vases.
Kind of pottery.
I'm going to do a little bit more with this.
This is going to be vertical lines.
You know these concepts about lines, you know, horizontal, vertical, diagonal.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Drawing Lines
Content:
• Horizontal
• Vertical
• Diagonal
• Parallel
• Intersecting
• Multi-directional (using games)
• Reference line (horizon line or ground line)
Description End:
Got parallel lines, intersecting, multi‑directional reference.
So these are all information or concepts related to lines that you can use.
Let's go back to the video.
[ Slide end: ]
And yeah, feel free, anybody, to comment, there we go.
Now, this graphite makes a really fine powder, gets all over everything.
There you go.
But they are adding horizontal lines to it.
I would suggest using ‑‑ a napkin or a tissue or maybe gloves when you do this.
Finally, doing vertical lines or diagonal lines, I'm sorry.
So diagonal lines, um, you're going to do ‑‑ Braille cell and then do one line advance.
So you are going to do a descending diagonal line, then to do an ascending one you are going to roll your paperback up.
So do a cell, roll it up, do a cell, roll it up, do a cell, and then ‑‑ then I'm going back down and then ‑‑ then I'm going to town.
Technology.
Another aspect of drawing that kind of gets ‑‑ that I like with ‑‑ with doing with kids it gets them used to looking at what they're writing, so your TVIs, if you have kids that when they're writing they never check their work, they will just sit there and pound away on the Brailler and never look and they make a lot of mistakes, they don't know they made a mistake.
If you are doing art, something more complicated like the dying no lines, you have to check it, look at it tactilely or visually to make sure that it looks like what you want it to look like.
So you see the diagonal lines down there towards the bottom going up and down.
It's not a real hard concept.
But a neat thing for kids to do.
You can use that same pattern here to do the ‑‑ to do the triangle.
[Title] Squares, Stars and Triangles
So here's squares, stars, and triangles.
[Title] Filled Square with Full Cells:
1. Braille 5 full cells, counting aloud with each cell.
2. Return and back space 5 times, counting each backspace.
3. Continue
4. Can do this same square with other cells: g's, L's, c's etc.
Scott: So starting off with a filled square with full cells, this is just like a black ‑‑ black like a solid shape.
A solid square.
It's very simple to do.
You just do all six fingers, five times across, backspace five times and five more.
So five cells, line advance, backspace five times.
And that's what you get.
Simple square.
[Title] Open Square with Full Cells:
1. Braille 5 full cells, counting aloud with each cell.
2. Return and back space 5 times, counting each backspace.
3. Braille one full cell and count "1", space three times and count "2, 3, 4"; braille one full cell and count "5".
4. Braille 5 full cells, counting aloud with each cell.
Scott: Of course, you can add things to that.
Now the open square, the open cell square you're going to leave a space in the middle of it.
That's neat because you could label it inside if you want to write a word inside of it to label it.
So let's look at that.
Go and roll that.
This first time I'll do it with full cells.
Again all six.
So what you do is when you do the first ‑‑ so you backspace, this is ‑‑ 10 I backspace two times, you did one full cell and you count one.
Almost one.
There's one.
And I space counting two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and then full cell, 10.
Okay.
Line advance.
And backspace 10.
And again.
Full cell one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10.
So you are using the space bar to make that space in between and here's what it looks like.
There.
So you got that nice space in the middle.
And open image.
[Title] Open Square with Single Lines:
1. Braille a "p", count "1". Braille three "c"'s, count 2, 3, 4. Braille a "th".
2. Return and backspace 5 times, counting aloud with each backspace.
3. Braille a "L", count "1". Space three times, count 2, 3, 4. Braille a "4/5/6 cell".
4. Repeat step 3 (2X)
5. Braille a "v". Braille...
Scott: Okay.
And finally, just to show another example is ‑‑ this is an open square with single lines, so the weight of the line will be a little bit different.
And you're going to start off with a P and then do Cs, and end with a TH.
For the top line.
The top of the square.
Uh‑oh, there we go.
There's the Cs and then a TH, and then I backspace, and now for the left side it will be an L.
And space and then it will be a ‑‑ a ‑‑ dots 4, 5, 6 for the right hand edge.
Finally when you get to the bottom of the square, you want to do a V and a drop C dot ‑‑ dots 3‑6 and end with a number sign.
There it is, so it looks a little different than the one other.
You can do the same thing with any combination of Braille cells, but that will give you some idea about a little bit of the variety that you can get.
[Title] Filled Triangle with full cells:
1. Braille a single full cell, count "1"
2. Return and back space 2 times.
3. Braille full cells, counting 1, 2, 3.
4. Return and back space 4 times.
5. Braille full cells, counting to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
6. Return and back space 6 times.
7. Braille bull cell, counting to 7.
Scott: Okay?
Here's the triangle.
I just did the triangle full cell.
But you can do it with open cells as well.
This one the pattern is you're going to do a full cell or you're going to do a cell and you return and backspace one more than you did.
And then you Braille one more than you did.
Of.
So let's ‑‑ so I'll Braille a cell, then I'll do a line advance and backspace twice.
Line advance, backspace one, two, and then three cells, one, two, three, line advance, backspace one, two, three, four, Braille five, one, two, three, four, five.
Okay?
So there's a little pattern.
One, two, three, four, that's ‑‑ that's the pattern and you make a triangle.
I think with this one, just to be cute, I add a little bit to it so you have a tree.
Now, if you are ‑‑ if you wanted to do a diamond,
[Title] Diamonds Using the Same Process as Triangles
Scott: you would just ‑‑ you would use the same process, you would just reverse the process.
So you would go 7 then backspace 6 then 5 then backspace 4.
So comes out like that.
That's the diamond.
[Title] Star with Full Cells:
1. Basically an X on the page.
2. Include vertical lines and horizontal lines.
3. Use various styles to make it more interesting.
4. Example is two vertical and two horizontal lines.
Scott: Okay.
Now a star.
Which basically is next on the page.
So you're going to have horizontal lines and vertical lines that intersect each other.
It's pretty self explanatory.
So ... you can see my fingers are totally black now from the graphite.
[Title] Simple Composition Using Multiple Shapes and Techniques
You may need to describe to students composition.
For example the horizon line and where foreground and background objects will be located on the page.
Scott: There's a star.
Okay.
Let's stop right there.
Before I do this picture.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Drawing Shapes
Content:
• Rectangles
• Triangles
• Diamonds
• Circles
Description End:
Those are just like some really basic, easy to do things with the Braille machine.
Once a child kind of understands how to do that, they can take off and they can start drawing pictures.
Because those are the basic elements of Perkins Brailler art.
Really it's just like any other skill, for a child to get good at it, they have to do it.
They have to have the opportunities to do it, a lot.
I don't, you know, a lots of times kids are more motivated by this type of thing instead of just reading and writing activities.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Content:
Figure 9: Student art. A drawing made with colored pen on paper. Several scribbled shapes clustered in the center.
Description End:
Thinking about how all of this ties into, you know, other areas of the Expanded Core Curriculum, you know, students do need to have literacy in things like graphics, right, maps and charts, that type of thing.
So we expose them to those ‑‑ to maps and charts and graphs but if you think how learning works, it's ‑‑ it's a two‑way process.
When you teach reading, for example, you teach reading and writing together.
You don't just teach reading.
You don't just teach writing.
You do them both.
There's a reason for that because the two support each other.
And build ‑‑ and the knowledge is ‑‑ it's ‑‑ they get the knowledge through different modes.
So the same thing, if you're going to show a child maps, if you want them to learn how to do maps, if you want them to learn how to do charts, it will be helpful if they can create the maps and charts as well.
It's analogous to be able to write as being able to read.
So I think it's great.
If you learn how ‑‑ show them how to do these lines, these simple shapes, you can start making pictures.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Drawing a Picture: Symbolic Representation
Content:
“The shape is a “symbol” of the object, it does not have to look like the object to be meaningful.
Description End:
I'm going to show a little bit.
A real simple idea about doing a picture.
But I want to point this out.
There is ‑‑ there was this ‑‑ there's been this big controversy going around for a while in some sectors about, you know, the appropriateness of tactile graphics, of tactile reproductions and whether they are worth the trouble or whether they really are ‑‑ whether they really help students who are blind because they don't necessarily ‑‑ because a blind person's experience of an image, of a three dimensional image doesn't necessarily translate to what a visual person does.
So a drawing to us, to a person who is visual, may look more like what it is than, say, a two dimensional tactile image does to somebody who is blind.
There is some dispute about that, though.
If you want to look at I think it's John Kennedy's books about drawing and the blind.
Say a lot about a ‑‑ about the analogous way that blind people look at lines and tactile drawings.
But the point that I'm trying to get at is that what we're working at this age, this young age, is not necessarily that they create a picture of a bear that looks like a bear or a picture of an apple that looks like an apple.
We want them to create images that represent things, images that symbolize other things.
Don't get too hung up on whether if you are drawing a picture of a bird that it has two wings and two legs that, you know, you as the teacher or other people represent.
If it looks like it to the student that's great.
I mean, how many kindergarteners, how many kindergarteners' pictures really look like what they say they are.
Even, you know, modern art of the last 100 years or so, how much of that easily looks like what it represents?
So let's look at drawing a picture.
I did a video of just showing how you could put some of these shapes and lines together to make a drawing.
[Title] Simple Composition Using Multiple Shapes and Techniques
You may need to describe to students composition. For example the horizon line and where foreground and background objects will be located on the page.
Scott: Now, keep in mind that sighted students are picking up so much information from each other incidentally.
From each other and from the world around them.
So a sighted student is seeing drawings, photographs, pictures, images, they are seeing that all the time.
And in the classroom, they are watching their peers draw and trace and color.
The student who is blind is not necessarily getting that information.
So it's incumbent on us, the teachers, to actually directly teach them here's how you draw.
So what I did here is first of all, to draw a ground line.
So you guys know in kindergarten, people start to draw, the first thing they do is they draw the ground and then they set objects upon that in their compositions.
So I did the ground line.
Big thick ground line.
The first thing that I add was the sun.
I know I called it a star earlier.
Sun, star.
The sun is just a big star.
Next thing I'll put on there is a cow.
So, yeah, that doesn't look like a cow, it's just a square with the word cow in it, but for the purposes of this, there's the composition, the cow is on the ground, the sun is up in the sky.
So you can start talking about those concepts with your student that you've got where is the sky in the picture, where is the cow in the picture, and I'll add one more thing on here.
[Title] Pro Tip!
Scott: So a tree.
Basically just a filled square with a vertical line.
And, yeah, you get filthy if you are using ‑‑ using the graphite.
The graphite is great, though.
You can stop that right there.
I'll talk about that in a second.
[Title] Brailler Art Game
Scott: So the graphite is really ‑‑ is really good to use.
If you are doing ‑‑ I know when I had the in‑write text in early elementary, I read Braille visually, not tactilely, I have to look at it and sometimes I put graphite on the page in order that it was easier to read.
Another thing that I wanted to show, another option for Braille ‑‑ another thing that you can do to make the Braille stand out more is take a [indiscernible] crayon or oil pastel crayon and rub it across very lightly and that will bring the dots up, but it tends to mush them down, wear the dots down so you can't feel them.
Look, oh, this came out pretty well, I think.
Okay.
So there's paper, clear paper, called Braille On.
Like labeling paper.
You can get full sheets of it.
Like I do here, just a real simple kind of abstract drawing with lines.
You can put that whole sheet of paper on to a sheet of construction paper.
So you get that nice contrast where you can see the white Braille dots against the blue background and it's plastic, hard plastic.
So you can put this up in an art exhibit and encourage kids to go look at it and teach it like your Braille students does.
It's not going to just get totally worn out by the end of the day.
So that's an idea.
Braille On paper, another use for it.
So the again looking back at that drawing I did, I did the cow and it was just a box.
It didn't have ears, it didn't have horns, didn't have a tail, didn't have legs.
Now, you can certainly start teaching to add that.
And again you're not teaching the child that this is how a cow looks.
You're teaching them that these are symbols, these are representations of what the cow has.
And you can show them how you could do some vertical lines for legs, you could do a couple of horizontal lines for horns, you could add a tail, you could add eyes, whatever you want to add.
[ Slide start: ] repeat previous slide
You can put all of that stuff in, but I think that's something that you do later on once they have kind of got that concept of how to build, how to use basic shapes in a symbolic way.
Now, getting ‑‑ talking about ears and legs and eyes and things like that, I wanted to show you a couple of books that give instructions for creating images that look like what they are.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Content:
Figure 11: The cover of the Drawing with Your Perkins Brailler book.
Description End:
These are a couple of ones that come ‑‑ this is the first one.
This one is available through we get that through Perkins School for the blind.
It's called Perkins drawing with your Perkins Brailler by Kim Charlson and so you can get that from Perkins, I think it's like $35.
And it's full ‑‑ it's got a number of ‑‑ a lot of different types of drawings in it that ‑‑ with instructions of how to do them.
[ Slide start: ] repeat previous slide
The other one that is available online, it's a free download, and this is Marie Porter, this is what about drawing?
And it's the same thing.
It has ‑‑ it shows ‑‑ gives instructions for how to draw.
So while we look at a couple of the pictures that are included in there, if you ‑‑
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Content:
Figure 12a: Student art. A drawing of an angel made with the Perkins Brailler.
Description End:
if we go to the next slide, okay, there's one that's included in Charleson's book.
It's an angel.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Content: Figure 12b: Student art. A drawing of a bunny made with the Perkins Brailler.
Description End:
I think there's another one, bunny rabbit that's simply adorable.
Is there another one?
Go back to the bunny rabbit ‑‑ or go back to the angel, actually.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Content:
Figure 12a: Student art. A drawing of an angel made with the Perkins Brailler.
Description End:
There, thank you.
So here's the instruction so you get the book, it has ‑‑ first will show you the image.
Gives you an example on the image, gives you instructions how to draw it.
Sounds complex.
I will read the instructions for one line.
It starts.
The.
Right one I, space four time, write one GH sign, space four times, write one S, space four times, right one I, write one E ... write one AR sign, space three times, write one E.
So that would be one line all the way across.
So it's ‑‑ it's a little more complicated and the images are sort of ‑‑ again they don't ‑‑ I don't know that a child would know this is an angel.
I think for older students these kind of things ‑‑ older students have sort of mastered a little bit of basics of drawing, I think this would be something really fun and interesting for them to do.
The neat thing, the book is organized, Charleson's book is organized by themes, holiday themes or food or animals that type of thing.
35 bucks.
The other one is free, it's got the same type of images and follows the same format.
Chapter 5. Websites for Art Teachers
So anyway, I'm been talking about visual arts for visually impaired for a little over a year now.
And I've been doing this because it seemed like an issue that should be addressed.
[ Slide end: ]
Seemed important to me from what I was seeing out in the field.
But it occurred to me that maybe I should try to get a better handle on things and see how other people feel about it.
So I did come up with two simple surveys to gauge people's feelings and one of these surveys is for art teachers and the other is for TVIs.
But I was trying to figure out how to get it out to people.
And I ended up sending the TVI survey, teachers of the visually impaired sent to five ESCs centers, asked them to forward to you guys.
Then I contacted art directors for five large urban districts and asked them to send it to their art teachers.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Websites for Art Teachers
Content:
Figure 13: Screenshot of the Art Teachers Experience website.
center text:
• Art Teacher Experiences: Students with Visual Impairment
• Teachers for Students with Visual Impairment
https://docs.google.com/a/tsbvi.edu/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeAam2elEUpEKmJRWf1Z9MlblG7CERj_ ryQIrGw_Ok63oXKnw/viewform?c=0&w=1
Description End:
So you may, if you lived in one of these areas, you may get that.
I don't know how ‑‑ I don't know how diligent these people are going to be in getting them out to you.
So I wanted to give you the option of showing it to you here.
It's online and if you go, the links are written in the ‑‑ in the handout.
But there's one for teacher of the visually impaired and one for art teachers.
This one is for the art teaches.
I think it asks six questions, seven questions, all multiple choice.
It's all incognito, you don't have to sign or write anything.
You just go and answer these questions.
It just asks you, for example, do you have a blind student, a visually impaired student in your art class?
And if so, how are they being ‑‑ how are they being accommodated for, are you working with your teacher of the visually impaired with that students?
How often are you seeing the teacher of the visually impaired with that student?
[ Slide end: ]
To get an idea of how that collaboration is working in this area, the same thing is to go back and look at the ‑‑ the questionnaire for the teachers of the visually impaired asked questions about how much training and background you've had in the arts and how much you provide support for the art teacher.
And I think this is an important point because as a TVI, we spent a lot of our time working on those subjects that are in the ‑‑ well, here in Texas primarily those subjects that are in the standardized school testing.
So math, science, social studies, language arts.
Those get a lot of attention.
The things that are seen as sort of ancillary, the things that aren't tested like art, like music, like drama, like PE, those I don't ‑‑ I haven't seen them getting as much support.
And I think part of it is because of the limited time available, limited resources available and also it's just not something that's been addressed.
When I went through my teacher prep program we didn't talk about art very much.
I don't think we ever talked about it, honestly.
I don't know that it's changed that much since then.
So I think it's a worthwhile dialogue, especially in light of looking at how much art is a part of the general ed curriculum in early elementary years and also that it is available there as an option for students in secondary.
Really, we're charged with making the full curriculum available to our students.
We're not charged with making pieces of it here and there, but really all of it should be available.
Now, some students, of course most students are not going to go out and become artists.
That's true of all students.
But it does provide them the option if they do, there are some kids who are wired that way, who just have a need to become artists and this would be their exposure to it.
Also it just gives them some awareness, better ‑‑ better link to the culture overall, which art is a major thing in our culture.
So anyway, if you have time to go in there and fill out those surveys that would be great.
I know I talked to a group of art teachers last December up in the ‑‑ they had a conference in Dallas.
I met a group of art teachers and my presentation was visually art for the visually impaired and the teachers that came, by and large, most of them had blind students or visually impaired students in their classroom and by and large most of them had not received a lot of support for that student.
So there's that.
That's ‑‑ I think it is an issue.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Content:
Figure 14: Student art. A sculpture featuring a scary face and several clay icons mounted on pieces of multicolored mesh fabric.
Description End:
So let's look at ‑‑ I have one more thing to show you guys.
I did a little worksheet that incorporates art.
So I thinking back to the video.
Okay.
[Title] Brailler Art Game
Scott: On here's a game that you can use.
What this is, this is encouraging kids to use different types of lines, so there's a start up there in the upper left hand corner and then these squares are all animals dog over on the right, over on the lower below the start on the left there's cat, below the cat is fish, and let's see over there to the right of fish is lizard and down at the bottom was gorilla.
So the idea is the students, from the start, you ask them to draw a line, you tell them you're in a pet shop somewhere.
Or you're in a zoo and you want them to go around the zoo and look at all of these animals.
Or feed all of these animals.
Say their job is to go around and feed all of the animals in the pet shop.
So you have to walk from start and first they have to go to let's say I forget where I went, I think I went to the cat first.
Once they fed the cat, they go to the dog.
Yeah.
So draw straight line down to the cat, from start, and then diagonal, horizontal, diagonal, horizontal, you keep going like that through the whole game.
So again just a sort of a fun way to incorporate drawing with the Perkins Brailler and an activity that's something other than just pure, straight literacy.
Okay.
So we have a question on the chat.
It's says, from Samantha Oxley: Do you think that drawing on the Perkins should be taught alongside teaching drawing skills on a drawing kit, raised line drawing or a separate skill?
Oh, that's an interesting question.
The last webinar that we did was drawing with the tools, the raised line drawing kits.
And, yes, I think that you can do ‑‑ I would encourage you to do both at once.
There are similar concepts that you would use on both of them.
But, you know, it's different ‑‑ the physical skills are very different.
Right?
Because on the drawing kits you are using a stylus on a piece of paper, the same way that you ‑‑ the same way that a sighted student would with a pencil and paper.
So I would have them do both.
I would have them do both.
The one I don't want to call it drawback, but the advantage that the Perkins Brailler has for a student is that you can incorporate both words and images on your paper.
With just one machine.
With just this one machine I can draw something and label it, I can draw another thing and label that, I could write a story on the same page illustrate it with the drawing kit, with the raised line drawing kit.
You could go in and label it using labeling tape, you know, Braille labeling tape.
But it's ‑‑ it's just a little more holistic.
The other thing is that typically it's easier oh, I didn't talk about coloring.
So kids I never met a blind student that didn't love to color.
I mean go figure.
They love to color.
I think because everyone else loves to color.
So it's what they want to do.
So those squares particularly those open squares, the squares that didn't have in the middle, those are wonderful because kids can make that and then color inside of it.
It's really good for fine motor because you have to figure out and draw inside the lines.
Again the Braille paper is just paper so it takes the crayons more easily than the drawing kit.
The drawing kit is a little more ‑‑ you are not locked into that sort of 90‑degree, you know, line and box thing that you are with the Perkins Brailler.
So, yes, in answer to your question, Samantha, I would say yes, teach them at the same time and I think there's a lot to are gained from both of those skills.
Any other questions?
Any other comments?
Y'all let me have it.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Content:
Figure 14: Student art. A sculpture featuring a scary face and several clay icons mounted on pieces of multicolored mesh fabric.
Description End:
I would really like to hear what you all have to say or what you might think.
I see we too have one Braille transcriber here, David, responsible for doing graphics.
So, David, do you do your graphics on a ‑‑ on the Perkins Brailler or you use like a tiger embosser for that, that would be a question.
Let's see, Laurie wants to know can you incorporate multi‑media drawings with the Brailler?
Can you incorporate multi‑media into drawings with the Brailler?
So do you mean could you do like collage?
Yeah, you could definitely take your Braille art and then you could add things to it.
You could add objects to it or you could add collage to it, you could add textures to it.
I mean a lot of times what in art classes ‑‑ before I started using the Perkins, I used that collage technique to teach that kind of spatial and symbolic concepts.
Uh‑huh.
David says he uses Duxbury, Word and a viewplus tiger embosser.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, the ‑‑ for producing tactile graphics, I mean, it's the Perkins Brailler is kind of slow I think for a lot of the people out there doing transcription because you have to produce so much work.
So if you have to rely I on the Perkins, power to you.
But more the information that I'm talking about now is for ‑‑ for early ‑‑ young kids.
But I will say this, the ideas that I was talking about that the object you present doesn't necessarily have to look like the object you present when you are doing your graphics, think about that.
Is it really necessary that if you want to show, if you are doing some transcription for young children, like a child in kindergarten and they have a worksheet that shows like a bear family and, you know, there's mamma bear, daddy bear, baby bear, you know, in the past when I started teaching, I said you don't need to include that because that's not meaningful for the Braille student.
[ Slide end: ]
It would take too much time to draw those three bears.
You don't have to draw three bears, but draw three squares and label them bear, bear, bear.
Now your student has that picture.
You know, whether it really matters as far as the lesson goes, maybe it doesn't, but your student has what the other students have and your student with talk with his peers, his neighbors about oh, look at my bears, they say here's mine, you could color his bears as his peers are coloring the bears.
It really does make a difference for including them in the culture of the classroom.
Let's see, Ann Cunningham, said add QR code audio clips.
Yeah, so you can add the QR, you can add like attach that to your images and then use the QR pin I think that it's called, that would read what it is.
Pat Rainy says we got an embossing tablet.
My three‑year‑old blind since birth student is using sentence criminals with it, we try to ... right.
The embossing tablet is a wonderful thing to use another wonderful thing is tracing, if you want to trace your hand on the embossing tablet, take it away.
Then the child has that sort of direct experience of oh, this shape represents that object.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Contact Info
Content:
If you would like to be included in group emails on the topic of arts instruction for the visually impaired, indicate this in the chat or send me an email.
• Do you ideas to share?
• Do you have student art to share?
• Theory to Practice School Consultation?
Facebook Page: Tactile Art and Tactile Graphics Symposium
Description End:
Really good for that.
Samantha says these skills are still relevant for older students when they have to create graphics and charts.
Yes, I agree.
That's what we're building to.
We're not just doing drawing for the sake of drawing, we are also doing it to build those skills, better tactile skills at drawing maps and graphs.
Amber says what's the best way to go about drawing your own drawing?
Like the Mari and Kim ones?
I'm not sure what you are referring to there Amber, Mari and Kim?
Creating your own?
I'm not sure Amber.
I'm almost out of time.
If you will email me, I will get back to you, okay.
I would love to talk to you guys some more about it.
Yes, please, if you have ideas to share or you want to continue on this conversation, email me.
My address is on the handout.
And I would love it if you guys could send me some student art.
If you can take pictures of students art, send it to me, I would love to include that on some of these future webinars, I've just been showing things that I have collected over the years from the student art here at TSBVI, I would love to have more of it.
Any of you guys out that would like to work together on how to include a student, if you have a blind or visually impaired student and you want to work together on including them into your art class at your local school, I would be glad to do a theory to practice school consultation on that.
[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Texas School for the Blind & Visually Impaired
Content:
Visual Arts for the Visually Impaired
Drawing with the Perkins Brailler
February 13, 2017
Facilitated by Scott Baltisberger, Education Consultant
baltisbergers@tsbvi.edu
Description End:
Sorry guys, that's all we've got time for.
Thanks for joining me.
And I look forward to seeing you next time.
[Silence]
Fade up from black.
Animation: Text for TSBVI transform into braille cells for TSBVI.
Fade to black.